“Cornfed Cadillac,” released on Jan. 16, is available as a CD, for downloading, and will soon be available on iTunes and other platforms.

O’Brien, 70, started learning to play guitar at Passim, a nonprofit arts organization in Cambridge, a few years ago. From there he started practicing songwriting and eventually formed a band, O’Brien! and Friends.

O’Brien! and Friends includes: Stash Wyslouch on guitar and vocals; Patrick M’Gonigle on fiddle and vocals; Brittany Karlson on bass; Sean Trishka on drums; and Allison DeGroot on clawhammer banjo.

O’Brien spoke with the Somerville Journal about his new album, what fans can expect, and how Somerville helped launch his musical career.

Somerville Journal: When and how did you get started in music?

O’Brien: I’ve been involved in the arts community in Somerville for the last 25 years or so, first in the 90s writing a lot of poetry and then in the 2000s I started painting, participating in the open studios and things like that. About three years ago, I thought I’d really like to begin focusing on music, which I’d never done actually. I picked up the guitar – in my naïve way I thought, ‘Look at all the people that play the guitar, I must be able to pick it up pretty quick.’ Wrong! It’s a very complicated instrument. But it’s great. To me, the arts are really self-expression, both through the playing – the melody, the musicianship – and then the lyrics themselves.

I’d been thinking about it for a while. I really enjoyed the painting, but I thought I’d really like to explore other things as well. Writing poetry has been great background for writing songs, and the painting on some level I always found kind of courageous, people who paint and are willing to put themselves out in the world and show that sense of self-expression. So I think all that has supported my willingness to go ahead and write songs and to put them out in the world.

SJ: How would you describe your style?

OB: I came up with this phrase that I think is really good. It’s kind of a “bubbling brew of country and folk, deliciously seasoned with bluegrass.” The themes that I work with in the songs – true love, heartbreak, loss and redemption, kind of what I call the resilience of the human spirit, and trying to take those themes and tell stories both with lyrics and melodies. All those issues are pretty complex issues, so in the song you try to find a way to use simple language and ideas and melodies that make those themes accessible for everyone.

The ideas come from everywhere. Walking down the street, you hear snippets of conversation that you think, “Oh, yeah, what an interesting thought.” I wrote a song called “Cornfed Cadillac,” and I woke up somehow in the morning with that name in my head and I thought, “What is ‘Cornfed Cadillac’?”

SJ: Have you figured out what “Cornfed Cadillac” means?

OB: You have to think of that like an abstract painting. People say to me, “Oh, it means an ethanol-fueled car.” To me, I had this image of a 1959 Cadillac convertible that this young guy somehow picked up and thought, “This is just the coolest car you can imagine.” He picks up this hitchhiker, and it’s kind of their adventure together. The name to me then elicited all these ideas about this crazy road trip they take together, and end up married.

SJ: What do you hope listeners take away from “Cornfed Cadillac?

O’B: I hope they feel like I’ve expressed things in a way that helps them see it differently, that they remember the rhythms, particularly the choruses. [I hope] it kind of sticks with people in a way that makes them think about these things but also makes them smile, enjoy and want to go back and hear the songs again.

SJ: What can you say about the release party?

OB: We [did] all the songs on the CD, there’s 13 songs, as well as some other ones – I’ve written a bunch of songs since. Some folks from the bluegrass ensemble at Passim are going to do an opening with four songs, which is great, I feel like I owe a lot to the school there. The way the room is set up, you’re right with the musicians, so it’s a nice intimate venue to do this.